American College of Clinical Pathologists (ACCP) backs hemochromatosis test for all by 25

Correction: We recently reported that a respected group of physicians backs universal testing for hemochromatosis. It seems there may have been some errors in that report because the best reference to universal hemochromatosis testing that I have been able to locate is at the CAP, the College of American Pathologists, not the American Society of Clinical Pathologists (ASCP). As far as I can tell the author of the article we referenced had conflated the two entities when citing the American College of Clinical Pathologists.

The other error was in thinking that this was a new call for testing for hereditary hemochromatosis. In fact the documentation dates back more than 10 years according to this NCBI citation in its resources for hemochromatosis, not that the age takes away from the recommendation. In fact, the CAP thought that screening with serum transferrin saturation (TS) was the way to go:

"Morbidity attributable to hereditary hemochromatosis (HH) is completely preventable through early detection using serum transferrin saturation (TS) as a screening test."

Following the CAP guidelines would avoid the concerns some people have about universal genetic testing. I can hardly bear to think of the amount of pain and suffering that would have been prevented if American doctors had adopted the CAP view on universal hemochromatosis screening, not to mention the billions in net healthcare cost savings.